1 Morning

1.1 Basic usage

TIPS

Use Tab to auto complete
Use up arrow to get previous command

1.1.1 Create a new project in R Studio

From File menu select New Project…
From New Project Dialog select New Directory
Select New Project as project type.
Give a project name, i.e. “Workshop” and click Create Project button.

1.1.2 Create a new script.

From the File menu select New File > R Script
Save file as “my_Rscript.R”

Write the following commands in code editor of R Studio and run them using icon Run in R Studio

1.1.3 Creating variables

Important notes:

Assign a value using an “arrow” (<-) or equals (=). These mean the same thing.
- The <- arrow is the “standard” in R, so we will use that.
Basic variable types:
- Numeric: 1, or 2.1, or 1.63e-5
- Character: “cat” or “dog”
- Boolean: TRUE or FALSE

Look at the Environment panel (top right) as you run these commands: you will see the variables appear as you define them.

# create different type of variables, note that the name must not start with a number
# can use <- or = for assignment of values
a <- 100
b <- "hello"
c <- TRUE # can also use T as shortcut
d <- FALSE # can also use F as shortcut
# Just type the variable name to see its value
a

## [1] 100

# You can see the type of variable by using class()
class(b)

## [1] "character"

1.1.4 Multi-valued variables

We have several ways of combining individual values:

1-dimensional:

Vector: multiple values of the same type, e.g. (1, 2, 3) or (“x”,“y”,“z”)
List: multiple values of different types, e.g. (1, “cow”, TRUE)

2-dimensional:

Matrix: table (rows by columns), all of the same type
Data frame: table (rows by columns), different columns can have different types

# vector of numbers
x <- c(6,5,4)
# vector of characters
y <- c("mouse","cat","dog")
x

## [1] 6 5 4

## [1] "mouse" "cat"   "dog"

# list of different things
# it can have ANY combination of objects you want!
#    the last part is a vector
z <- list(4, "cat", TRUE, c(1,2))
z

## [[1]]
## [1] 4
## 
## [[2]]
## [1] "cat"
## 
## [[3]]
## [1] TRUE
## 
## [[4]]
## [1] 1 2

# matrix
## 1:6 is a shortcut for a vector of all numbers from 1 to 6
A <- matrix(c(1:6), nrow=3)
A

##      [,1] [,2]
## [1,]    1    4
## [2,]    2    5
## [3,]    3    6

# data frame
## can combine different vectors of different types
## these MUST be the same length
df <- data.frame(x ,y)
df

Check the size:

length(): length of vector or list
dim(): number of rows and columns of a matrix or data frame
- nrow() and ncol(): just the number of rows or columns

length(x)

## [1] 3

dim(A)

## [1] 3 2

nrow(A)

## [1] 3

1.1.5 Basic operations

Arithmetic:

Addition and subtraction: $1+2$; $6-5$
Multiplication and division: x * y; $3/4$

Boolean:

AND: a & b
OR: a | b

Sorting objects: using order()

Transpose a matrix: swap the rows and columns, t() function

# arithmetic
1 + 1

## [1] 2

12/3

## [1] 4

# arithmetic on a vector or matrix
A + A # element-wise addition

##      [,1] [,2]
## [1,]    2    8
## [2,]    4   10
## [3,]    6   12

A * A # element-wise multiplication

##      [,1] [,2]
## [1,]    1   16
## [2,]    4   25
## [3,]    9   36

# boolean
TRUE & FALSE

## [1] FALSE

T | F # T and F are shortcuts for TRUE and FALSE

## [1] TRUE

# sorting: order() gives the order of the INDICES
x

## [1] 6 5 4

order(x) # this is the order of the indices in order to sort

## [1] 3 2 1

x[order(x)] # this is the sorted vector

## [1] 4 5 6

# sort a data frame alphabetically by the second column
df[ order(df[,2]), ]

# transpose a matrix
t(A)

##      [,1] [,2] [,3]
## [1,]    1    2    3
## [2,]    4    5    6

1.1.6 Combining and subsetting objects

Combine objects:

Contatenate vectors or lists: c(vec1 ,vec2), c(list1, list2)
Combine matrices or data frames by column: cbind(A, B)
Combine matrices or data frames by row: rbind(A, B)

Subset objects. Note that in R, the indexing starts at 1: vec[1] gets the first item in a list, vec[2] gets the second, etc.

Get an element of a vector or list: vec[1]
- NOTE: list[1] gives you a list with just the first element. list[[1]] gives you the value of the first item in the list.
Get an element of a matrix or data frame: matrix[1,2] (row, then column)
- Get all items from first row: matrix[1, ] (leave blank after the comma)
- Get all items from first column: matrix[, 1] (leave blank before the comma)
Specific to data frames:
- df[1]: gives you a data frame with just the first column
- df[[1]]: gives you a vector of the first column

Set membership: %in%

# combine vectors
c( c(1,2,3), 4:8 )

## [1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

# combine lists
c( list("a","b"), list(1,c(2,3)) )

## [[1]]
## [1] "a"
## 
## [[2]]
## [1] "b"
## 
## [[3]]
## [1] 1
## 
## [[4]]
## [1] 2 3

# combine matrices by column
cbind(A, A)

##      [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4]
## [1,]    1    4    1    4
## [2,]    2    5    2    5
## [3,]    3    6    3    6

# combine matrices by row
rbind(A, A)

##      [,1] [,2]
## [1,]    1    4
## [2,]    2    5
## [3,]    3    6
## [4,]    1    4
## [5,]    2    5
## [6,]    3    6

# subset a vector
x[1] # first element

## [1] 6

x[c(1,2)] # first two elements (vector of indices)

## [1] 6 5

# subset a matrix
A[1,1] # first row, first column

## [1] 1

A[1:2, 1] # first two rows, first column; this turns the result into a vector though

## [1] 1 2

A[1:2, 1, drop=F] # force R to keep it like a matrix

##      [,1]
## [1,]    1
## [2,]    2

A[1:2, ] # first two rows, all columns

##      [,1] [,2]
## [1,]    1    4
## [2,]    2    5

# subset a data frame
df[1] # this is still a data frame, getting first column

df[[1]] # this is a vector

## [1] 6 5 4

# set membership: %in% operator
y

## [1] "mouse" "cat"   "dog"

"cat" %in% y

## [1] TRUE

"kitten" %in% y

## [1] FALSE

y %in% "cat"

## [1] FALSE  TRUE FALSE

1.1.7 Naming

In a vector or list, we can name our elements. In a matrix or data frame, we can name the rows and columns. This is very useful for referencing values later.

Names can be used in brackets instead of numbers, e.g., vec[“value1”]. For lists and data frames you can also use $ to refer to names (refers to column names for data frames).

# naming vector x
x

## [1] 6 5 4

names(x) = c("first","second","third")
x

##  first second  third 
##      6      5      4

x["second"] # gets element named 'second'

## second 
##      5

# make a named vector
newx = c("cat"=1, "dog"=2)
newx

## cat dog 
##   1   2

# assign row names and column names to df
rownames(df) = c("r1","r2","r3")
colnames(df) = c("size","animal")
df

df["r1","animal"]

## [1] "mouse"

df[c("r1","r3"), ]

df$animal # this won't work for a matrix or vector, only a data frame or a list

## [1] "mouse" "cat"   "dog"

1.1.8 Factors

A factor is a special type of vector used to store categorical information. For example, storing group metadata. Example:

Experiment with wild-type (WT) and two different knock-outs (KO1, KO2).
There are two replicates for each genotype, so list each value twice.

Factors are very important when we set up statistical analyses and need to define groups.

f = factor(c("WT","WT","KO1","KO1","KO2","KO2"))
f

## [1] WT  WT  KO1 KO1 KO2 KO2
## Levels: KO1 KO2 WT

A factor has:

A vector with discrete categorical values.
- Could be numbers or characters, but NOT measurements. Only a specific number of unique values.
Levels, which is a second vector of the unique values.
- If you add to or modify the factor vector, you can only add existing levels.
- You can modify values in the vector by changing level names.
- You can specify the order of the levels for convenience.
- You can make it ordinal.

# see the levels of a factor
# NOTE: this is a character vector with the unique values in f
levels(f)

## [1] "KO1" "KO2" "WT"

# change the name of the WT level
levels(f)[3] = "Wild-Type"
f

## [1] Wild-Type Wild-Type KO1       KO1       KO2       KO2      
## Levels: KO1 KO2 Wild-Type

# redefine f so "WT" comes first
f = factor(c("WT","WT","KO1","KO1","KO2","KO2"),levels=c("WT","KO1","KO2"))
f

## [1] WT  WT  KO1 KO1 KO2 KO2
## Levels: WT KO1 KO2

# ordinal factor
f2 = factor(c("time1","time2","time3"), ordered=T)
f2

## [1] time1 time2 time3
## Levels: time1 < time2 < time3

# try to add a new value to a factor
f[6] = "KO3" ## generates an ERROR!
f ## last value is now NA (missing)

## [1] WT   WT   KO1  KO1  KO2  <NA>
## Levels: WT KO1 KO2

# common use case: make certain columns of a data frame factors
df[,2] = factor(df[,2])
df # looks the same

df[,2] # now we see the levels

## [1] mouse cat   dog  
## Levels: cat dog mouse

1.2 Writing functions and using apply

1.2.1 Write a function to find the max value of a vector.

This is just for our practice, as the max() function already exists in R.

Note: Use indentation (tab) to make codes more human readable.

get.max <- function(x){
    max <- x[1]
    for (i in x){
        if (i > max){
            max <- i
        }
    }
    return(max)
}
a <- c(23.3, 1, 3, 55, 6)
get.max(a)

## [1] 55

max(a) # this is the built-in max function

## [1] 55

1.2.2 apply statements

For this we will use a built-in data frame in R, mtcars.

mtcars is data extracted from the 1974 Motor Trend magazine. It has various aspects of car design and performance for 32 cars (1973-1974 models).

# Built in data frame mtcars
?mtcars # get info on mtcars data set

dim(mtcars) # get dimensions of data frame

## [1] 32 11

head(mtcars) # See first six rows

# apply function
# find the max value per feature
apply(mtcars, 2, max)

##     mpg     cyl    disp      hp    drat      wt    qsec      vs      am    gear 
##  33.900   8.000 472.000 335.000   4.930   5.424  22.900   1.000   1.000   5.000 
##    carb 
##   8.000

# which cars have the max features?
# here we define a function WITHIN the apply statement
# what type of object does this return?
apply(mtcars, 2, function(x) rownames(mtcars)[x==max(x)])

## $mpg
## [1] "Toyota Corolla"
## 
## $cyl
##  [1] "Hornet Sportabout"   "Duster 360"          "Merc 450SE"         
##  [4] "Merc 450SL"          "Merc 450SLC"         "Cadillac Fleetwood" 
##  [7] "Lincoln Continental" "Chrysler Imperial"   "Dodge Challenger"   
## [10] "AMC Javelin"         "Camaro Z28"          "Pontiac Firebird"   
## [13] "Ford Pantera L"      "Maserati Bora"      
## 
## $disp
## [1] "Cadillac Fleetwood"
## 
## $hp
## [1] "Maserati Bora"
## 
## $drat
## [1] "Honda Civic"
## 
## $wt
## [1] "Lincoln Continental"
## 
## $qsec
## [1] "Merc 230"
## 
## $vs
##  [1] "Datsun 710"     "Hornet 4 Drive" "Valiant"        "Merc 240D"     
##  [5] "Merc 230"       "Merc 280"       "Merc 280C"      "Fiat 128"      
##  [9] "Honda Civic"    "Toyota Corolla" "Toyota Corona"  "Fiat X1-9"     
## [13] "Lotus Europa"   "Volvo 142E"    
## 
## $am
##  [1] "Mazda RX4"      "Mazda RX4 Wag"  "Datsun 710"     "Fiat 128"      
##  [5] "Honda Civic"    "Toyota Corolla" "Fiat X1-9"      "Porsche 914-2" 
##  [9] "Lotus Europa"   "Ford Pantera L" "Ferrari Dino"   "Maserati Bora" 
## [13] "Volvo 142E"    
## 
## $gear
## [1] "Porsche 914-2"  "Lotus Europa"   "Ford Pantera L" "Ferrari Dino"  
## [5] "Maserati Bora" 
## 
## $carb
## [1] "Maserati Bora"

# tapply function
# average mpg based on number of cylinders
tapply(mtcars$mpg, mtcars$cyl, mean)

##        4        6        8 
## 26.66364 19.74286 15.10000

# sapply function
# check which cars have different numbers of cylinders
# first get the different cylinder counts
# unique() gives the unique entries in a vector
cyls <- unique(mtcars$cyl)
cyls

## [1] 6 4 8

# order from smallest to biggest
cyls <- cyls[order(cyls)]
cyls

## [1] 4 6 8

# car names per cylinder count
sapply(cyls, function(x) rownames(mtcars)[mtcars$cyl==x])

## [[1]]
##  [1] "Datsun 710"     "Merc 240D"      "Merc 230"       "Fiat 128"      
##  [5] "Honda Civic"    "Toyota Corolla" "Toyota Corona"  "Fiat X1-9"     
##  [9] "Porsche 914-2"  "Lotus Europa"   "Volvo 142E"    
## 
## [[2]]
## [1] "Mazda RX4"      "Mazda RX4 Wag"  "Hornet 4 Drive" "Valiant"       
## [5] "Merc 280"       "Merc 280C"      "Ferrari Dino"  
## 
## [[3]]
##  [1] "Hornet Sportabout"   "Duster 360"          "Merc 450SE"         
##  [4] "Merc 450SL"          "Merc 450SLC"         "Cadillac Fleetwood" 
##  [7] "Lincoln Continental" "Chrysler Imperial"   "Dodge Challenger"   
## [10] "AMC Javelin"         "Camaro Z28"          "Pontiac Firebird"   
## [13] "Ford Pantera L"      "Maserati Bora"

1.3 Read and write a file

Read the file https://wd.cri.uic.edu/R/birth_weight.txt into a data frame
Sort the data frame by mother’s age, and write to a new file

Data frame columns
- bwt: baby’s birth weight in ounce (low bwt: < 88 ounces)
- smoke: 0 - mother is not a smoker, 1 - smoker
- parity: 0 - child first born, 1 - otherwise
- gestation: length of pregnancy in days
- age: mother’s age in years
- height: mother’s height in inches
- weight: mother’s pregnancy weight in pounds

bw_data  <- read.delim("https://wd.cri.uic.edu/R/birth_weight.txt")
head(bw_data)

data_ordered_by_age <- bw_data[order(bw_data$age), ]
head(data_ordered_by_age)

write.table(data_ordered_by_age,"birth_weight_ordered_by_age.txt",sep="\t",
   quote=F,row.names=F)

1.4 Install CRAN and Bioconductor packages

1.4.1 Check if selected packages are installed?

In R Studio you can select Packages tab in lower right pane to view all installed packages. Also possible to list via R command.

# List all installed packages
installed.packages()

Check if select packages are installed.

c("ggplot2", "ComplexHeatmap") %in% rownames(installed.packages())

## [1] FALSE FALSE

1.4.2 Install Bioconductor package: “ComplexHeatmap”

install.packages("BiocManager”) 
BiocManager::install("ComplexHeatmap", update=F)
library(ComplexHeatmap)

1.4.3 Install CRAN package: “tidyverse”

If you are asked for a CRAN mirror site, please select one which is close to your location: e.g. “USA (IN)” Tidyverse is a collection of packages, including tidyr, dplyr, and ggplot2. Technically each of these are dependencies for the tidyverse package, and so will get installed also.

install.packages("tidyverse")
# load the package
library(tidyr)
library(dplyr)
library(ggplot2)

1.5 Cleaning and transforming a sample dataset

NOTE: Pipes (%>%) to head() are just so that we see the first 6 lines of each output.

# Load the tidyverse
library(tidyverse)
# some exercises with mtcars
head(mtcars)

# Move car names to a column
data <- mtcars %>%
  rownames_to_column(var = "car")
head(data)

# Example 1: Select only mpg, cyl, and hp
# pipe to head() at the end to see the first few lines
data %>%
  select(car, mpg, cyl, hp) %>% head()

# Example 2: Rename columns for clarity
data %>%
  rename(miles_per_gallon = mpg,
         horsepower = hp) %>% head()

# Example 3: Filter cars with mpg greater than 25
data %>%
  filter(mpg > 25) %>% head()

# Example 4: Filter cars with 4 or 6 cylinders
data %>%
  filter(cyl %in% c(4, 6)) %>% head()

# Example 5: Create a new variable called power_to_weight
data %>%
  mutate(power_to_weight = hp / wt) %>% head()

# Example 6: Use `case_when` to categorize cars by engine size
data %>%
  mutate(engine_size = case_when(
    disp < 150 ~ "small",
    disp < 300 ~ "medium",
    TRUE ~ "large"
  )) %>% head()

# Example 7: Average mpg by number of cylinders
data %>%
  group_by(cyl) %>%
  summarise(mean_mpg = mean(mpg))

# Example 8: Count cars per gear group
data %>%
  count(gear)

# Example 9: Pivot mpg, hp, and wt into long format
## note: showing a tibble will only show the first few rows
## don't need to use head()
data_long <- data %>%
  pivot_longer(cols = c(mpg, hp, wt),
               names_to = "variable",
               values_to = "value")
data_long

# Example 10: Pivot back to wide format
data_long %>%
  pivot_wider(names_from = variable, values_from = value)

# Example 11: Introduce some NA values
data_with_na <- data %>%
  mutate(mpg = replace(mpg, mpg < 20, NA))
head(data_with_na)

# Example 12: Drop rows with NA
data_with_na %>%
  drop_na() %>% head()

# Example 13: Replace NA with a fixed value
data_with_na %>%
  replace_na(list(mpg = 0)) %>% head()

2 Afternoon

2.1 Data Visualization

2.1.1 Data set

Read in the data for this exercise. This is a table of cell metadata and selected gene expression levels from a single-cell RNA-seq project. The columns in this table are:

UMIs: total UMI (unique read) count per cell.
Genes: number of genes expressed.
Genotype: WT or KO, 2 genotypes profiled in this experiment.
Batch: A or B, 2 replicate captures collected in this experiment.
PercentMT: Fraction of reads mapping to mitochondrial genes. Higher levels can indicate issues with cell viability. For this data set, cells with % MT > 15% have already been filtered out.
HasTCR: Whether or not this cell expressed a TCR, based on a separate TCR library collected for these samples.
Cluster: cluster assignment from analysis.
UMAP_1 and UMAP_2: UMAP coordinates for each cell.
Log-scaled normalized gene expression levels for several genes of interest.

sc <- read.delim("http://wd.cri.uic.edu/R/scRNA_cells.txt",row.names=1)
# convert the Cluster column to a factor
sc$Cluster = factor(sc$Cluster)
head(sc)

2.1.2 Scatterplots

We will make various versions of a UMAP plot.

Using base R

# basic scatterplot
plot(sc$UMAP_1, sc$UMAP_2)

# colored by cluster - this is kind of clunky
cell_colors = factor(sc$Cluster)
levels(cell_colors) = rainbow(length(levels(cell_colors)))
plot(sc$UMAP_1, sc$UMAP_2, col=cell_colors)

Note on the above syntax: we’re using factors as a shortcut to make unique colors for the clusters:

Make a factor of the cluster assignments.
Rename the factor levels as color names (RGB codes). The rainbow function gives an even spacing of colors across the rainbow for a given number of colors.

It would be even better to add a legend. This is possible in base R plots, but much easier with ggplot2.

Using ggplot2

ggplot2 makes it much easier to add more features to our plot, like automatically coloring dots based on a categorical label and adding a legend.

library(ggplot2)
ggplot(sc, aes(x = UMAP_1, y = UMAP_2, color = Cluster)) +
  geom_point()

# to save as a PDF:
pdf("basic_UMAP_plot.pdf")
ggplot(sc, aes(x = UMAP_1, y = UMAP_2, color = Cluster)) +
  geom_point()
dev.off()

Facet by genotype (facet_wrap)

If you do not see a plot appear, make sure you have run dev.off() above.

ggplot(sc, aes(x = UMAP_1, y = UMAP_2, color = Cluster)) +
  geom_point() +
  facet_wrap( ~ Genotype)

Facet by genotype and batch (facet_grid)

ggplot(sc, aes(x = UMAP_1, y = UMAP_2, color = Cluster)) +
  geom_point() +
  facet_grid( Batch ~ Genotype)

Update the labels and the theme

ggplot(sc, aes(x = UMAP_1, y = UMAP_2, color = Cluster)) +
  geom_point() +
  theme_classic() +
  labs(x="UMAP1", y="UMAP2", color="Cell type", title="UMAP by cluster")

Color by expression of a gene of interest

ggplot(sc, aes(x = UMAP_1, y = UMAP_2, color = Cxcr6)) +
  geom_point()

# nicer coloring with viridis palette
ggplot(sc, aes(x = UMAP_1, y = UMAP_2, color = Cxcr6)) +
  geom_point() +
  scale_color_viridis_c()

Color by genotype, using a custom color scheme

ggplot(sc, aes(x = UMAP_1, y = UMAP_2, color = Genotype)) +
  geom_point() +
  scale_color_manual(values=c("WT"="red","KO"="blue"))

2.1.3 Box plots and violin plots

These are both ways to plot the distribution of values.

Show the level of Cxcr6 by cluster and genotype

# as a boxplot
ggplot(sc, aes(x=Cluster, y=Cxcr6, fill=Genotype)) +
  geom_boxplot()

# as a violin plot
ggplot(sc, aes(x=Cluster, y=Cxcr6, fill=Genotype)) +
  geom_violin()

# with variables!
baseplot <- ggplot(sc, aes(x=Cluster, y=Cxcr6, fill=Genotype))
baseplot + geom_boxplot()

baseplot + geom_violin()

Violin plot for many genes

This is an example of showing expression for many marker genes over all clusters in a compact visualization.

# make a new data frame with just the clusters, and the gene expression levels
gene_expr <- sc[,c(7,10:17)]
head(gene_expr)

# convert to the "long" format. Load the tidyr library if you haven't already.
library(tidyr)
gene_expr_long <- pivot_longer(gene_expr, !Cluster)
gene_expr_long

# basic violin plot
# we're using the faceting to show the different groups,
# rather than separating along the x-axis
basic_vioplot <- ggplot(gene_expr_long, aes(x=NA,y=value,fill=Cluster)) +
  geom_violin() + facet_grid(Cluster ~ name)
basic_vioplot

# make it look nicer
basic_vioplot + 
  theme_void() + 
  coord_flip() +
  guides(fill="none") +
  theme(strip.text.x = element_text(angle=45))

Where:

theme_void() removes the x and y axis tics, labels, and the background grid.
coord_flip() makes the violins go left-to-right instead of up and down.
guides(fill="none") turns off the legend for the fill color, as this is redundant with the cluster facet labels.
theme(strip.text.x = element_text(angle=45)) rotates the x-direction facet labels (gene names) by 45 degrees.

2.1.4 Bar plots

Number of cells per cluster

# using geom_bar: let ggplot2 count for you
ggplot(sc, aes(x=Cluster)) + geom_bar()

# do the count first and use geom_col()
cluster_counts <- table(sc$Cluster)
cluster_counts

## 
##   0   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9  10  11  12  13 
## 949 891 809 718 687 566 526 486 310 303 212 179 106  97

cluster_counts_df <- data.frame(cluster_counts)
cluster_counts_df

ggplot(cluster_counts_df, aes(x=Var1, y=Freq)) + geom_col()

Cells per cluster, also with genotype and TCR

# stacked barplot
ggplot(sc, aes(x=Cluster, fill=Genotype)) +
  geom_bar()

# side-by-side barplot
ggplot(sc, aes(x=Cluster, fill=Genotype)) +
  geom_bar(position="dodge")

# facet by TCR status
ggplot(sc, aes(x=Cluster, fill=Genotype)) +
  geom_bar(position="dodge") +
  facet_wrap(~HasTCR)

2.2 Heatmaps

The test data set are the top 100 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) from an RNA-seq project with 3 groups (Control, disease model 1, disease model 2). The values in this table are log2 CPM (log-scaled normalized expression).

library(ComplexHeatmap)
degs <- read.delim("http://wd.cri.uic.edu/R/degs.txt",row.names=1)
# look at the top of the file
head(degs)

# z-score expression
degs.z <- t(scale(t(degs)))
# plot a heatmap
Heatmap(degs.z, name="Z-score")

# turn off row names
Heatmap(degs.z, name="Z-score", show_row_names=F)

# add a color label for the groups
groups <- gsub("\\.[0-9]*$","",colnames(degs))
groups

##  [1] "Control" "Control" "Control" "Control" "Model1"  "Model1"  "Model1" 
##  [8] "Model1"  "Model2"  "Model2"  "Model2"  "Model2"

group_colors <- c("Control"="blue","Model1"="orange","Model2"="purple")
column_label <- HeatmapAnnotation(df=data.frame(Group=groups),
  col=list(Group=group_colors), which="column")
Heatmap(degs.z, name="Z-score", show_row_names=F, top_annotation=column_label)

2.3 PCA

We’ll the same RNA-seq data as above. NOTE: usually you would compute PCA over all genes, rather than just the top ones as in this example.

pca <- prcomp(t(degs))
# We can use the summary() function to calculate summary statistics on the pca
summary(pca)

## Importance of components:
##                            PC1     PC2     PC3     PC4     PC5     PC6     PC7
## Standard deviation     20.0719 3.28916 1.09160 1.02606 0.90698 0.80002 0.71785
## Proportion of Variance  0.9614 0.02582 0.00284 0.00251 0.00196 0.00153 0.00123
## Cumulative Proportion   0.9614 0.98720 0.99004 0.99256 0.99452 0.99605 0.99728
##                            PC8     PC9    PC10    PC11      PC12
## Standard deviation     0.69225 0.53578 0.47392 0.38804 2.653e-15
## Proportion of Variance 0.00114 0.00069 0.00054 0.00036 0.000e+00
## Cumulative Proportion  0.99842 0.99910 0.99964 1.00000 1.000e+00

# This can be stored in an R object as a list
pca_stats <- summary(pca)
names(pca_stats) # Shows the elements in the list

## [1] "sdev"       "rotation"   "center"     "scale"      "x"         
## [6] "importance"

importance <- pca_stats$importance # Get information on PC importance
importance

##                             PC1      PC2      PC3      PC4       PC5       PC6
## Standard deviation     20.07188 3.289157 1.091597 1.026061 0.9069831 0.8000232
## Proportion of Variance  0.96138 0.025820 0.002840 0.002510 0.0019600 0.0015300
## Cumulative Proportion   0.96138 0.987200 0.990040 0.992560 0.9945200 0.9960500
##                              PC7       PC8       PC9      PC10     PC11
## Standard deviation     0.7178452 0.6922487 0.5357828 0.4739224 0.388043
## Proportion of Variance 0.0012300 0.0011400 0.0006900 0.0005400 0.000360
## Cumulative Proportion  0.9972800 0.9984200 0.9991000 0.9996400 1.000000
##                                PC12
## Standard deviation     2.653185e-15
## Proportion of Variance 0.000000e+00
## Cumulative Proportion  1.000000e+00

# add the group metadata to the PC coordinates
pca_coords = data.frame(pca$x)
head(pca_coords)

pca_coords$Group = groups
# PCA plot
# add the % explained variance for each PC in the axis labels
ggplot(data = pca_coords, aes(x=PC1, y=PC2, color=Group)) +
    geom_point() +
    theme_classic() +
    labs(x = paste0("PC1 (", round(100*importance[2,1], 1), "%)"),
         y = paste0("PC2 (", round(100*importance[2,2], 1), "%)"))

# scree plot
screeplot(pca)

NOTE: although all three groups look well-separated in the PC1 vs PC2 plot, note that the biggest differences are with respect to Model1: this is separated along PC1, which explains the vast majority of the variance. This is consistent with what we saw in the heatmap.

2.3.1 PCA plot with sample labels (TAKE-HOME)

For this we’ll use the ggrepel package, which does a good job of fitting text labels into a plot.

Install the package first:

install.packages("ggrepel")

library(ggrepel)
# add the sample names to our data frame
pca_coords$Sample = rownames(pca_coords)
# PCA plot, with label aesthetics and geom_text_repel layer
# set show legend=F to avoid the duplicate legend for text colors
ggplot(data = pca_coords, aes(x=PC1, y=PC2, color=Group, label=Sample)) +
    geom_point() +
    theme_classic() +
    geom_text_repel(show.legend=F) +
    labs(x = paste0("PC1 (", round(100*importance[2,1], 1), "%)"),
         y = paste0("PC2 (", round(100*importance[2,2], 1), "%)"))

2.4 Differences between groups (t-test, ANOVA)

2.4.1 Data set

We will use the birth weight data from earlier today. Read that back in if needed.

bw_data <- read.delim("https://wd.cri.uic.edu/R/birth_weight.txt")

2.4.2 Check normality: Shapiro test

Caution: a large sample size will usually result in a significant p-value from Shapiro test, because any tiny deviation from normality will be detected. We should also look at how far W is from 1 to see how big the deviation is. For reasonably small differences, the normality assumption is probably still OK.

length(bw_data$bwt)

## [1] 1174

hist(bw_data$bwt)

shapiro.test(bw_data$bwt)

## 
##  Shapiro-Wilk normality test
## 
## data:  bw_data$bwt
## W = 0.99563, p-value = 0.001917

# use QQ-normal plot to check the normality. 
# if the data is normally distributed, the points in the QQ-normal plot will
# lie on a straight diagonal line. 
qqnorm(bw_data$bwt)
# qqline shows a line for a "theoretical" normal distribution
qqline(bw_data$bwt, col="red")

# alternative: test on raw counts from RNA-seq
# get raw read count data
raw.count <- read.delim("http://wd.cri.uic.edu/advanced_R/raw.count.txt",row.names=1)
# convert to the gene's raw read count to a numeric vector
count <- as.numeric(raw.count[1, ])
# there are 46 data points
length(count)

## [1] 46

# check if it is a bell shape in the histogram of raw read counts
hist(count)

shapiro.test(count)

## 
##  Shapiro-Wilk normality test
## 
## data:  count
## W = 0.49027, p-value = 2.014e-11

qqnorm(count)
qqline(count, col="red")

Birth weight values are close to normal. The RNA-seq values are not close to normal.

2.4.3 t-test and Wilcox test

Test birth weight vs mother’s smoking status.

bw_data$smoke <- factor(bw_data$smoke)
# t-test
t.test(bwt ~ smoke, data=bw_data)

## 
##  Welch Two Sample t-test
## 
## data:  bwt by smoke
## t = 8.6265, df = 941.81, p-value < 2.2e-16
## alternative hypothesis: true difference in means between group 0 and group 1 is not equal to 0
## 95 percent confidence interval:
##   7.158132 11.374153
## sample estimates:
## mean in group 0 mean in group 1 
##        123.0853        113.8192

# the result is a list
# we can access values with $
ttest_result <- t.test(bwt ~ smoke, data=bw_data)
ttest_result

## 
##  Welch Two Sample t-test
## 
## data:  bwt by smoke
## t = 8.6265, df = 941.81, p-value < 2.2e-16
## alternative hypothesis: true difference in means between group 0 and group 1 is not equal to 0
## 95 percent confidence interval:
##   7.158132 11.374153
## sample estimates:
## mean in group 0 mean in group 1 
##        123.0853        113.8192

ttest_result$p.value

## [1] 2.656464e-17

ttest_result$conf.int

## [1]  7.158132 11.374153
## attr(,"conf.level")
## [1] 0.95

# wilcox test
wilcox.test(bwt ~ smoke, data=bw_data)

## 
##  Wilcoxon rank sum test with continuity correction
## 
## data:  bwt by smoke
## W = 212970, p-value < 2.2e-16
## alternative hypothesis: true location shift is not equal to 0

# visualization
ggplot(bw_data, aes(x=smoke, y=bwt)) +
  geom_boxplot()

2.4.4 One-way ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis test

Test birth weight against categorized values of gestation.

# reload dpylr if necessary
library(dplyr)
# categories for gestational time 
# based on number of weeks:
#  <37 weeks: pre-term
#  37-41 weeks: full-term
#  >41 weeks: late term
bw_data <- bw_data %>%
  mutate(gestation_cat = case_when(
    gestation < 37*7 ~ "pre term",
    gestation < 41*7 ~ "full term",
    TRUE ~ "late term"
  ))
# write as a factor, specifying level order
bw_data$gestation_cat = factor(bw_data$gestation_cat,
  levels=c("pre term","full term","late term"))
# anova
anova <- aov(bwt ~ gestation_cat, data=bw_data)
summary(anova)

##                 Df Sum Sq Mean Sq F value Pr(>F)    
## gestation_cat    2  61546   30773   108.4 <2e-16 ***
## Residuals     1171 332512     284                   
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1

# to access the p-values directly:
anova.stats <- summary(anova)
anova.pvalues <- anova.stats[[1]][["Pr(>F)"]]
## NOTE: "NA" corresponds to the residuals row
anova.pvalues

## [1] 6.571396e-44           NA

# diagnostic plots for anova
plot(anova)

# kruskal wallis
kruskal.test(bwt ~ gestation_cat, data=bw_data)

## 
##  Kruskal-Wallis rank sum test
## 
## data:  bwt by gestation_cat
## Kruskal-Wallis chi-squared = 146.76, df = 2, p-value < 2.2e-16

# visualization
ggplot(bw_data, aes(x=gestation_cat, y=bwt)) +
  geom_boxplot()

2.4.5 Two-way ANOVA

Compare birth weight to categorized gestation and smoking

# make sure smoking is a factor
bw_data$smoke <- factor(bw_data$smoke)
# without interaction
summary(aov(bwt ~ gestation_cat + smoke, data=bw_data))

##                 Df Sum Sq Mean Sq F value Pr(>F)    
## gestation_cat    2  61546   30773  114.97 <2e-16 ***
## smoke            1  19338   19338   72.25 <2e-16 ***
## Residuals     1170 313174     268                   
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1

# with interaction
## note that gestation_cat:smoke is the interaction term
summary(aov(bwt ~ gestation_cat * smoke, data=bw_data))

##                       Df Sum Sq Mean Sq F value Pr(>F)    
## gestation_cat          2  61546   30773 115.609 <2e-16 ***
## smoke                  1  19338   19338  72.649 <2e-16 ***
## gestation_cat:smoke    2   2272    1136   4.268 0.0142 *  
## Residuals           1168 310902     266                   
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1

# boxplot
ggplot(bw_data, aes(x=gestation_cat, fill=smoke, y=bwt)) +
  geom_boxplot()

It appears that the effect of smoking is strongest for earlier term pregnancies. The significance of the dependence of smoking effect on pregnancy term is captured in the interaction term of the model.

2.5 Correlation and linear regression

2.5.1 Correlation

Comparison of mother’s height and weight.

# correlation
cor(bw_data$height, bw_data$weight)

## [1] 0.4352874

# correlation test
cor.test(bw_data$height, bw_data$weight)

## 
##  Pearson's product-moment correlation
## 
## data:  bw_data$height and bw_data$weight
## t = 16.552, df = 1172, p-value < 2.2e-16
## alternative hypothesis: true correlation is not equal to 0
## 95 percent confidence interval:
##  0.3877305 0.4805332
## sample estimates:
##       cor 
## 0.4352874

# using non-parametric correlation coefficients
cor.test(bw_data$height, bw_data$weight, method="spearman")

## 
##  Spearman's rank correlation rho
## 
## data:  bw_data$height and bw_data$weight
## S = 134713533, p-value < 2.2e-16
## alternative hypothesis: true rho is not equal to 0
## sample estimates:
##       rho 
## 0.5004735

cor.test(bw_data$height, bw_data$weight, method="kendall")

## 
##  Kendall's rank correlation tau
## 
## data:  bw_data$height and bw_data$weight
## z = 18.02, p-value < 2.2e-16
## alternative hypothesis: true tau is not equal to 0
## sample estimates:
##       tau 
## 0.3743995

# plot
ggplot(bw_data, aes(x=height, y=weight)) +
  geom_point()

2.5.2 Linear regression

This time compare birth weight to gestation (comparison already done as categorized gestation), and other variables.

# simple linear regression
summary(lm(bwt ~ gestation, data=bw_data))

## 
## Call:
## lm(formula = bwt ~ gestation, data = bw_data)
## 
## Residuals:
##     Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
## -49.348 -11.065   0.218  10.101  57.704 
## 
## Coefficients:
##              Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
## (Intercept) -10.75414    8.53693   -1.26    0.208    
## gestation     0.46656    0.03054   15.28   <2e-16 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
## 
## Residual standard error: 16.74 on 1172 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared:  0.1661, Adjusted R-squared:  0.1654 
## F-statistic: 233.4 on 1 and 1172 DF,  p-value: < 2.2e-16

ggplot(bw_data, aes(x=gestation, y=bwt)) +
  geom_point()

# add best-fit line
# se=T -> add standard error bars
ggplot(bw_data, aes(x=gestation, y=bwt)) +
  geom_point() +
  geom_smooth(method="lm", se=T)

## `geom_smooth()` using formula = 'y ~ x'

# multiple regression
## additive model
summary(lm(bwt ~ gestation + smoke + weight, data=bw_data))

## 
## Call:
## lm(formula = bwt ~ gestation + smoke + weight, data = bw_data)
## 
## Residuals:
##     Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
## -51.920 -10.759  -0.279   9.743  51.354 
## 
## Coefficients:
##              Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
## (Intercept) -17.62648    8.69128  -2.028   0.0428 *  
## gestation     0.44809    0.02936  15.261  < 2e-16 ***
## smoke1       -8.07789    0.96444  -8.376  < 2e-16 ***
## weight        0.11818    0.02267   5.213  2.2e-07 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
## 
## Residual standard error: 16.07 on 1170 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared:  0.2335, Adjusted R-squared:  0.2315 
## F-statistic: 118.8 on 3 and 1170 DF,  p-value: < 2.2e-16

## using the full model with all interactions
summary(lm(bwt ~ gestation * smoke * weight, data=bw_data))

## 
## Call:
## lm(formula = bwt ~ gestation * smoke * weight, data = bw_data)
## 
## Residuals:
##     Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
## -51.657 -10.597  -0.062   9.738  47.653 
## 
## Coefficients:
##                           Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)   
## (Intercept)             -1.118e+02  7.032e+01  -1.590  0.11208   
## gestation                7.857e-01  2.514e-01   3.125  0.00182 **
## smoke1                   2.711e+01  1.093e+02   0.248  0.80409   
## weight                   9.945e-01  5.297e-01   1.877  0.06070 . 
## gestation:smoke1        -1.197e-01  3.912e-01  -0.306  0.75965   
## gestation:weight        -3.140e-03  1.895e-03  -1.657  0.09777 . 
## smoke1:weight           -7.161e-01  8.342e-01  -0.858  0.39082   
## gestation:smoke1:weight  2.520e-03  2.984e-03   0.845  0.39848   
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
## 
## Residual standard error: 15.99 on 1166 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared:  0.2431, Adjusted R-squared:  0.2386 
## F-statistic: 53.51 on 7 and 1166 DF,  p-value: < 2.2e-16

# note that overall explained variance is about the same
# but with more terms in the model the explanatory value 
# of each variable is lower
# to test the EFFECT of each variable, using anova:
summary(aov(bwt ~ gestation * smoke * weight, data=bw_data))

##                          Df Sum Sq Mean Sq F value   Pr(>F)    
## gestation                 1  65450   65450 255.871  < 2e-16 ***
## smoke                     1  19533   19533  76.365  < 2e-16 ***
## weight                    1   7015    7015  27.425 1.94e-07 ***
## gestation:smoke           1   3069    3069  11.997 0.000552 ***
## gestation:weight          1    538     538   2.104 0.147137    
## smoke:weight              1     18      18   0.072 0.788345    
## gestation:smoke:weight    1    182     182   0.713 0.398481    
## Residuals              1166 298252     256                     
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1

# use different plots for comparison of variables
ggplot(bw_data, aes(x=gestation, y=bwt, color=smoke)) +
  geom_point() +
  geom_smooth(method="lm", se=T)

## `geom_smooth()` using formula = 'y ~ x'

ggplot(bw_data, aes(x=weight, y=bwt, color=smoke)) +
  geom_point() +
  geom_smooth(method="lm", se=T)

## `geom_smooth()` using formula = 'y ~ x'

2.6 Fisher’s Exact and Chi-squared tests

2.6.1 Fisher’s Exact test

Test for an association of smoking and parity.

# make sure both are factors
bw_data$smoke <- factor(bw_data$smoke)
bw_data$parity <- factor(bw_data$parity)
smoke_vs_parity <- bw_data[, c("smoke","parity")]
head(smoke_vs_parity)

# make contingency table with table()
smoke_vs_parity_table <- table(smoke_vs_parity)
smoke_vs_parity_table

##      parity
## smoke   0   1
##     0 525 190
##     1 341 118

fisher.test(smoke_vs_parity_table)

## 
##  Fisher's Exact Test for Count Data
## 
## data:  smoke_vs_parity_table
## p-value = 0.7857
## alternative hypothesis: true odds ratio is not equal to 1
## 95 percent confidence interval:
##  0.7245511 1.2590005
## sample estimates:
## odds ratio 
##  0.9561918

# compute log2 odds ratio
fet <- fisher.test(smoke_vs_parity_table)
log2(fet$estimate)

## odds ratio 
## -0.0646281

# barplots
# plot the total counts
ggplot(smoke_vs_parity, aes(x=smoke, fill=parity)) +
  geom_bar()

# plot the proportions - this is what we're testing
ggplot(smoke_vs_parity, aes(x=smoke, fill=parity)) +
  geom_bar(position="fill") +
  labs(y="Fraction")

No effect observed here.

2.6.2 Chi-square test

Test for association of smoking and gestation category

smoke_vs_gest <- bw_data[,c("smoke","gestation_cat")]
smoke_vs_gest_table <- table(smoke_vs_gest)
chisq.test(smoke_vs_gest_table)

## 
##  Pearson's Chi-squared test
## 
## data:  smoke_vs_gest_table
## X-squared = 9.8147, df = 2, p-value = 0.007392

# barplot
ggplot(smoke_vs_gest, aes(x=smoke, fill=gestation_cat)) +
  geom_bar(position="fill") +
  labs(y="Fraction")

2.6.3 Post-hoc for Chi-square test using Fisher’s Exact (TAKE HOME)

We have a significant difference from Chi-square. Which groups show the differences? Visually it looks like the full term and late term groups have different proportions of smokers.

Test for individual differences with Fisher’s Exact test.

# store groups to run tests over
cols <- ncol(smoke_vs_gest_table)
# start an empty data frame
term_stats <- data.frame()
# run a test for each column (term group) one at a time
for(i in 1:cols){
  # get the counts for this term group
  term.counts <- smoke_vs_gest_table[,i]
  # get the counts for all other term groups
  term.other <- rowSums(smoke_vs_gest_table[,-i])
  # we're specifically seeing if THIS term group has a different distribution
  # of smoking vs non-smoking mothers, using fisher's exact test
  term.table <- cbind(term.counts, term.other)
  fet <- fisher.test(term.table)
  # combine the estimate (odds ratio) and p-value) into the data frame
  # and use the term group as the row name
  term_stats <- rbind(term_stats, c(fet$estimate, fet$p.value) )
  rownames(term_stats)[nrow(term_stats)] <- colnames(smoke_vs_gest_table)[i]
}
# set the column names, and add log2-scaled odds ratio and FDR corrected p-value
colnames(term_stats) <- c("OddsRatio","P.Value")
term_stats$Log2OddsRatio = log2(term_stats$OddsRatio)
term_stats$Q.Value = p.adjust(term_stats$P.Value,method="fdr")
term_stats

We see statistically significant differences in mother smoking frequency for full term and late term.

We will discuss the FDR correction (used above) next.

2.7 False discovery rate

Randomly generate vector wt (size=20) with mean 10 and standard deviation 3.
Randomly generate vector ko (size=20) with mean 10 and standard deviation 3.
Use t-test to test if wt is different from ko, and get the p-value for the test.
Repeat this procedure 10000 times.
How many $p < 0.05$?
Calculate false discovery rate, a.k.a FDR or q-value.

NOTE: rnorm simulates n values (below, 20) from the normal distribution with a given mean and standard deviation.

# start empty vector
pval <- c()
# generate 10k random data sets from the
# SAME normal distribution
for (i in 1:10000){
        wt <- rnorm(20, mean=10, sd=3)
        ko <- rnorm(20, mean=10, sd=3)
        pval[i] <- t.test(wt, ko)$p.value
}
# how many p-values are <0.05?
sum(pval<0.05)

## [1] 488

summary(pval)

##      Min.   1st Qu.    Median      Mean   3rd Qu.      Max. 
## 0.0000456 0.2523210 0.4959265 0.5006591 0.7507688 0.9998409

# FDR correction
fdr <- p.adjust(pval, method="fdr")
sum(fdr<0.05)

## [1] 0

summary(fdr)

##    Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max. 
##  0.4562  0.9868  0.9868  0.9907  0.9992  0.9998

3 Take-home exercises

3.1 Read/write data from/to Excel spreadsheets

NOTE: If you have not previously installed openxlsx then install from CRAN.

install.packages("openxlsx")

3.1.1 Read/write Excel spreadsheets using `openxlsx`

Read the first sheet (tab)

library(openxlsx)
sheet_1 <- read.xlsx("http://wd.cri.uic.edu/advanced_R/taxa_relative.xlsx", sheet = 1)
sheet_1[1:10, 1:5]

Load the sheet (tab) named “L6”

sheet_L6 <- read.xlsx("http://wd.cri.uic.edu/advanced_R/taxa_relative.xlsx", sheet = "L6")
sheet_L6[1:10, 1:5]

Write a data frame to an Excel spreadsheet

bw_data  <- read.delim("https://wd.cri.uic.edu/R/birth_weight.txt")
# Create a workbook with two empty sheets
wb <- createWorkbook()
addWorksheet(wb, "birth weight")
# Write the birth weight data to Excel
writeData(wb, sheet="birth weight", x=bw_data)

Introduction to R

Research Informatics Core

October 8, 2025